What evil lurks in the hearts of PlayStation discs? Silly pictures of Chocobos and Cactuars! And aliens and riskbreakers!

Now, isn't this a useless (and potentially booooooring) feature? Who cares, it's some cool stuff! Several months ago, I found this program called PSMPlay which has the ability to find and read common file types used in PlayStation games. The obvious use for this is to watch movies and animation, and while that's certainly fun, that's just the tip of the iceberg!
PSMPlay can also read various graphic and texture files as well. Most discs have only a few accessible files, a common graphic here and there, but somes discs reveal a behind-the-scenes look into how a game is constructed graphically, and many hidden treasures too, which I have collated here for your perusal.

Final Fantasy 8

Some cute finds here -- now, I haven't had a chance to play the Chocobo World minigame, because I don't have a PocketStation, but I presume the first image comes from the tutorial. I'm guessing all of the images from the tutorial are placed in one large image to save space and access times (this is how many texture files are arranged; see below.) But the neatest thing is related -- an image illustrating the basic story of Chocobo World: Mog seeks treasure in a dark cave, Moomba, Cactuar and Chocobo fear that he might die, so they go after him to bring him back. I can see the finished version used in the tutorial, but I can't possibly imagine the development sketch used anywhere in the game. But it's still awesome... a nice easter egg hidden away by some programmer, perhaps?
The next three are texture files, the various bits and pieces stretched over polygons to make objects look more detailed. The first is one the mechanical enemies, I forget which though. And there's some Phoenix parts (Kentucky Fried Phoenix! It's finger lickin' good!). The third is some plasma effects for a spell, which is probably wrapped around a cylinder or disc shaped object.

Silent Hill

Silent Hill's disc is awesome -- not just because it contains a fantastic game, but because absolutely everything in the game is so easily accessible through PSMPlay. Absolutely every image, every texture is available. Here are just a few texture files from the disc. Obviously, colors are added later by the PlayStation's graphic processor somehow. The first few are from locations... like the FF8 textures before, it's all in one file and the computer stretches certain parts of it over polygons making up an object. The last two are living things -- particularly of note are the faces, which get wrapped around the heads... it's fascinating to see it flattened like that... then again, I can be geeky sometimes.

These are probably scenes from Silent Hill's ultra-secret-so-hard-to-find-you-need-a-guide-so-it's-not-really-a-spoiler ending where aliens come to Silent Hill. I thought the ending was supposed to go differently, but apparently the images say otherwise. I call this sequence "Aliens Are Not Nice."

Vagrant Story

Now here's the most amazing find of the bunch. 16 fantastic pictures of various inhabitants of Lea Monde in neat poses. The most amazing thing about these though, is that these are not seen in the game! More easter eggs to be found by enterprising programmers tinkering with PlayStation discs?